" In Ailing Delta, High Hopes Add to Burden For Obama
By Michael Leahy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 19, 2009; Page A01
In Hollandale, Miss., a food-distribution center for the poor occupies one of
the few active storefronts downtown. The promise of jobs even 200 miles away
was enough to raise hopes -- before dashing them. (Photos By Michael
Williamson -- The Washington Post)
Helen Perkins, who works at an Early Head Start facility, holds participant
Jevaria Johnson, 11 months. Perkins worries of expectations for Barack Obama:
"He's not God; he's a politician. Some people get the two confused
sometimes."
HOLLANDALE, Miss. -- Helen Perkins can feel the worries of her neighbors --
and their expectations. "The things that some of our people hope from Obama
-- more help, better homes in a hurry -- sound like they're hoping for a
miracle from God," she says.
At 63, Perkins lives in Hollandale, a town of about 2,900 in the Mississippi
Delta, historically a fertile territory for big agriculture and bigger
misery. Chronically poor, largely African American, loyally Democratic in an
otherwise very red state, the Delta is a land where deprivation and
diminished dreams are as indigenous as cotton. Poverty levels, obesity and
diabetes rates, teenage pregnancy statistics, failing businesses: All the bad
indices are woefully high in the Delta.
Not far from the site of the first of Hollandale's many collapsed houses is a
sign at the town border: "Welcome to Hollandale: A town preparing for the
future today." For many expectant people here, that future will turn on
Barack Obama.
On Election Day, Hollandale went for Obama in a landslide, ................"